ARCHIVE

Fridman Gallery's New Ear Festival is a bold exploration of avant-garde sound and contemporary art. The festival features a diverse lineup of artists pushing the boundaries of sonic innovation, embodying one of Fridman Gallery's core missions—to help restore the creative, experimental spirit of downtown Manhattan. The seventh iteration of Fridman Gallery's New Ear Festival takes place January 5-7, 2024. All three nights will be streamed live on the Live from Fridman Gallery Wave Farm Radio channel and Friday and Saturday night performances will be broadcast live on WGXC 90.7-FM. For more information, and to purchase tickets, visit https://www.fridmangallery.com/new-ear-festival.

This audio archive features the performances from HxH and Nepenthae.

HxH is the improvisatory electro-acoustic duo of Lester St. Louis and Chris Williams. The duo utilizes a mix of trumpet, cello and electronics to build worlds traversing through acoustic sound, grainy textures, expansive pools of sounds, breaks, cuts and beats. The approach is conceived as an expansiveness that holds a personal intimacy. HxH wants to bring the listeners in, tune them to the experience and take a long trip. HxH functions as a vehicle to bring together the mass of references and influences Chris and Lester share and create ways to crystalize those ideas in real, expanded time to an experience over minutes or hours.

Nepenthae’s slow moving and visceral sonic world draws upon diverse influences ranging from noise, doom metal, free jazz, and spectralism, invoking a full spectrum vibratory experience, oscillating between stasis and movement, and the material intensity of low frequency sound. Nepenthae’s unique instrumentation features: 17-string electric bass (Zach Layton), contrabass, (Henry Fraser), and drums (Greg Fox).